Tag: JOHN F KENNEDY

IV

But as bad as all the above is, its not the worst part of this awful book. No, the worst part is when Wallace tries to show that the Kennedy campaign stole the 1960 election.  To do this, he does something I thought no credible author would ever do again. He trots out Judy Exner and Sy Hersh. Again, can the man be for real?  He must be the only reporter in America who is not aware that the book he is using, Hersh’s The Dark Side of Camelot, was discredited before it was even published.

Hersh famously fell for a phony trust that was allegedly set up between the Kennedys and Marilyn Monroe by her attorney Aaron Frosch. Hersh was told, not once, but twice that the signatures were faked.  (For an analysis of this, click here https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/sy-hersh-falls-on-his-face-again-and-again-and-again) When experts in forgeries finally examined the papers, they proved to be forged in every way. The question later became why did Hersh, or his publisher, not do an examination first?

But then Hersh used Exner and, as one will read above and below, that story also blew up in his face. Exner—who we will deal with soon– had now changed her story a second time.  She now said she was knowingly exchanging messages between John Kennedy and Sam Giancana. Unlike Wallace, Hersh realized Exner’s ever evolving story had credibility problems.  So Hersh now said that there was a witness to her messenger mission, namely Martin Underwood, a political operative for Mayor Richard Daley. (Hersh, pp. 304-305) 

Like the Monroe trust BS, this also exploded in Hersh’s face.  Because when Underwood was examined under oath by the Assassination Records Review Board, he denied he did any such thing. (ARRB Final Report, p. 136) But incredibly, Wallace alludes to that part of the story again here.  For whatever reason, he does not name Underwood. (Wallace, p. 113)

Now, still going with “pie on his face” Hersh, Wallace writes that Joseph Kennedy was involved in bootlegging operations with organized crime during Prohibition. This was disproved by author Daniel Okrent in his fine book on the era titled Last Call.  Okrent went through nearly 900 pages of FBI documents on Joe Kennedy.  These were done to clear him for the many positions he served on in government. Okrent found not one page or source who said a word about any such involvement. Joe Kennedy biographer David Nasaw discovered the same for his book, The Patriarch. But Nasaw, who had unprecedented access to Joe Kennedy’s files, also went over how Joe got so very rich. It was through stocks, real estate and, above all, the film business. As Okrent notes in his book, this mob mythology was begun in the sixties by gangsters who clearly had an agenda to smear JFK and RFK since they had made their lives so troublesome with their war against the Mob.

Another point that Wallace sidesteps is this.  As FBI agent William Roemer explained in his book, Man Against the Mob, the Bureau had total surveillance on Giancana.  This included following him everywhere he went and having electronic wires on four dwellings that he did his business in. In Roemer’s 400 page book one will read no reference on tape to any arrangement with Joe Kennedy or the election.  Which is pretty convincing that it never happened.

But for me, there is something even more convincing.  That is the work of professor John Binder. His landmark article “Organized Crime and the 1960 Presidential Election” first appeared in 2007 at Public Choice; it has been preserved at Research Gate. In a statistical study, Binder examined the returns for what were considered the 5 Chicago Outfit controlled wards. He discovered that there was no indication that the voting trends in those wards went up, and in some cases they declined. He also makes short work of the idea that the outfit could influence the Teamsters in that election. (Wallace, p. 214) Since Jimmy Hoffa depised the Kennedys and would not trust them with a tennis ball. After all they had already gotten rid of Hoffa’ predecessor Dave Beck.

Thus Binder deduces that “union members in states where the Outfit operated voted less heavily Democratic than usual and therefore against JFK.” Binder concluded his essay by saying that “much of what has been written about the Outfit, the 1960 presidential  election and other events involving  the Kennedy family appears to  be historical myth”. (Here is a link to this fascinating article https://themobmuseum.org/blog/did-the-chicago-outfit-elect-john-f-kennedy-president/) 

I should add one concluding note about Sy Hersh and his JFK book: Not even the MSM supported it. And  in most cases they savaged it. The most brutal and thorough review was composed by Garry Wills in The New York Review of Books on December 18, 1997. That memorable critique closed by saying it was an odd experience watching a once valued reporter destroy his reputation in a mad, and ultimately failed, mission to tear down President Kennedy–while simultaneously imploding himself. Somehow Chris Wallace missed that.

V

What Wallace does in trying to revive the dead corpse of Judy Exner is something I don’t even think magician David Copperfield would attempt.

Exner first surfaced into the American consciousness for the Church Committee in 1975. At that time—and this is key– she stated that she wanted to head off wild-eyed speculation that she had ever discussed her relationships with either Sam Giancana or Johnny Roselli with John Kennedy.  She also said she knew nothing about the CIA attempts to neutralize Castro, and they were never brought up with the president.  Also, the president did not know she was seeing Giancana and Roselli. (NY Times 12/18/75, article by John Crewdson)

She called a press conference in San Diego to say that she wanted to clear her name so as not to be implicated in “these bizarre assassination conspiracies.”  She also added that she “had no wish to sell the rest of her story to book publishers or to the news media.” (ibid) Although there were phone calls from Exner to the White House from California, no notations recorded her as a visitor to the Oval Office. (ibid). Evelyn Lincoln said the same. 

It was revealed that when Hoover informed the White Hose of who she was, the communications stopped after March 22,1962. (Ibid)

What is exceptional about this initial summary is that almost all of it will be radically altered over time.  And Wallace does not tell the reader about any of the revisions. She did take part in the writing of a book and Wallace quotes from it.  But that book was clearly a team operation out of agent Scott Meredith’s office with prolific Mafia writer Ovid DeMaris as co- writer.  It is important to note that DeMaris was also a big fan of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and a Warren Commission backer. (The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, pp. 330-31). There is a salacious and unbelievable  scene in My Story placed at the Democratic Convention of 1960, one which has all the earmarks of being a fabrication. And unsurprisingly, Wallace repeats it here. (Wallace pp. 169-70; DiEugenio and Pease, pp. 332-33)       

Not only does Wallace not tell the reader that Exner altered her story, he does not even note when it happened. It was for the February 29, 1988 issue of Peoplemagazine. And they were radical alterations. She reversed herself on everything she said in 1975. She now stated that she was seeing Giancana at Kennedy’s bidding! But further that she helped arrange meetings between Kennedy and Giancana and Kennedy and Roselli,  some of which took place at the White House!  (ibid, p. 333) If one reads the two best biographers on those two gangsters, William Brashler and Lee Server respectively, nothing like this ever came close to happening. And the idea it would happen with Bobby Kennedy as Attorney General is pure science-fiction. Exner was selling whoppers, and she was being paid tens of thousands to do so. (DiEugenio and Pease, p. 334)

In her new and modified version, the reasons for these newly remembered meetings is in  order to cinch elections and to liquidate Castro. She specifically mentioned West Virginia at that time. Which Wallace agrees with.  Again, this shows  how poor his research is. Dan Fleming wrote a good book about that primary.  He notes that no subsequent inquiry—by the FBI, the state Attorney General, or by Senator Barry Goldwater—ever turned up any evidence of skullduggery that influenced the outcome of the election. (Fleming, Kennedy vs Humphrey: West Virginia 1960, pp. 107-12)  And unlike what Wallace tries to insinuate, Fleming interviewed literally scores of people throughout the state. He could not find any trace of any underworld figure on the ground during that primary.

To show the reader just how bad Countdown 1960 is, Wallace mentions union leader Raymond Chafin, but he does so through author Laurence Leamer.  As far as I could detect, he does not refer to Chafin’s book Just Good Politics. Therefore Wallace twists the story of the Kennedy campaign contribution to Chafin for a get out the vote effort. Chafin originally backed Hubert Humphrey in that primary. Kennedy asked to meet with him and he told him that if he won, and then won the White House, he would give him even more than Humphrey had promised. Chafin changed his mind and asked for $3,500 to get out the vote.  Kennedy’s team misconstrued this and gave him $35.000, which he spent days delivering to other counties in the state.

But that is not the end of the story.  Because Kennedy made good on his promise.  He summoned him to the White House after his inauguration. He was told he had 15 minutes with the president.  Kennedy countered and said Chafin would have all the time he needed.  At the end of the book, Chafin said that Kennedy ended up doing more for West Virginia than any previous president. That is quite a lot for Wallace to leave out of the story.

In other words, Exner’s story about West Virginia is, to say the least, unfounded. But again, what Wallace leaves out is that Exner added to her story even further.  Almost ten years later, for Vanity Fair, she now said that JFK had impregnated her and she had an abortion.  Again, this is something she said the opposite of in her book. There she literally said “I didn’t have an abortion.” (DiEugenio and Pease, p. 336)

But she then changed her story again for Hersh. For People, back in 1988, she said she was not really sure what was in the satchel that JFK gave her. Now it became 250,000 dollars in hundred dollar bills and the message was the elimination of Castro. (Hersh, pp. 303-07). To say that Exner changed her story is much too mild.  She has done a somersault from her original statements.  And the part about the elimination of Castro is an outright lie.  Because the declassified Inspector General Report on the CIA/Mafia plots to kill Castro specifically says that no president had any knowledge of them.  (Pp. 132-33)

There is another outright lie that Exner told.  In Hersh’s book she told him that Attorney General Bobby Kennedy asked, “Are you still comfortable doing this. We want you to let us know if you don’t want to.” (Hersh, p. 308). Again, RFK is the man who had wall to wall surveillance on Giancana through both the FBI and the Justice Department. So Bobby was going to give Hoover bribery information on a mobster through the White House?  Who could believe this? 

But Exner herself contradicted this.  In an interview she did with Larry King in 1992, she said that she never even talked to Bobby, perhaps in passing at a rally in Los Angeles.  In other words, Exner told so many lies she could not keep track of them. And this is the kind of witness that Wallace bases his book upon.  

I could go on and on.  For example Wallace mentions the case of Florence Kater saying she had a picture of JFK leaving a girlfriend’s house at night.  The picture is not clear as to who the man is.  But Wallace attacks Kennedy for harshly scolding Kater about it in a threatening manner.  What Wallace does not reveal is this: Kater was blackmailing Kennedy.  She wanted a Modigliani painting.

VI

We now come to the reason for the book.  Which the author admits in his Acknowledgments. (p. 397). He says that during the January 6^th Insurrection he was so disturbed  that he thought back to the elections he had covered.  He then writes that 2020 shattered the belief in acknowledging a winner and loser in a presidential campaign.  

Wallace then makes a quantum leap in time.  He says that thinking about that day somehow reminded him of the election of 1960.  There is a slight problem here.  Wallace did not cover that election.  In fact, he was only 13 years old.  So, like much of the book, this simply does not wash. And if it did remind him of any election he covered, it should have been the 2000 election in Florida and the whole Bush v Gore phony decision commandeered by Justice Antonin Scalia and the Supreme Court. Where they halted the recount certified by the state and stopped the probability of Vice President Al Gore from winning the election.  Which it appeared he would have done since he was gaining on George W. Bush very quickly.  

Besides the Supreme Court and its phony decision, we know that Roger Stone created a mini riot during a recount at the Steven B. Clark Government Center in downtown Miami. This was later named the Brooks Brothers riot since it was made up of Republican staffers disguised as local residents. As Chris Lehmann noted in The Nation, it was this ersatz local riot that outlined the blue print for Trump’s insurrection. (August 4, 2022) Roger Stone had been a dirty tricks impresario under Richard Nixon. In fact Stone wore a Nixon tattoo on his back. He then moved into the orbit of Donald Trump.  Stone was then part of the Stop the Steal demonstrations in Washington on the eve of the Insurrection.

As Lehmann notes, the difference between the two is that the Florida riot worked.  That particular recount was halted and then the Supreme Court sealed the deal for the disastrous reign of George W. Bush. Which, among other things, included the deaths of about 650,000 civilians in Iraq. Even William Kristol later said that the Brooks Brothers riot let loose a buried trait in the GOP that later became dominant. (ibid)

Also, many observers think that the whole mythology about the corruption in West Virginia began with Nixon’s operatives late in the general election.  When it looked like Nixon had lost his lead, they planted a story in the St. Louis Post Dispatch to this effect.

So 2000 is the proper precedent for the Insurrection. Not a pile of mythology created after the fact by gangsters, Judy Exner and Sy Hersh. Wallace does not want to go there for obvious employment reasons. But also because he admits he favored Nixon in 1960. (Wallace, p. 397). He clearly did not like Kennedy.  And that carried forward to this book.  Any reporter who would stoop to using Exner and Hersh to trash JFK is too biased to be trusted.

The best way to close this review it to quote Wallace from the MSNBC show The Beat. On October 9^th, he commented on the Fox defamation lawsuit over the 2020 election. He said, “There ought to be a price to pay when you don’t tell the truth.”

As detailed above, you just paid it Chris.

Whenever one thinks that the MSM cannot get any worse, or purposefully bad on the subject of John Kennedy or his assassination, another reminder arrives showing they can.  The latest example of this is Chris Wallace’s Countdown 1960.  This book, by former Fox reporter turned CNN employee Chris Wallace, is ostensibly about the race for the presidency in 1960.  I say ostensibly because anyone who knows the subject will be able to figure out what this book is really about.  And, in fact, Wallace pretty much confesses to his real intent in the acknowledgements section of the book.  That section is usually included in the front of a volume, but here its at the end. I will get to why I think that is so later.  

I

Like almost every writer who wants to exalt his work on this subject, Wallace begins by saying that the primary system of electing party nominees for the presidency was somehow a novelty in 1960.  And Kennedy decided to use it to original effect.  This is simply not the case. The primary system was really invented during the Progressive Era, but the first one was held before that, in 1901 in Florida. And just a few years later, 12 states were conducting them. By 1910, the practice of holding state elected delegates to cast ballots for the party winner at the convention was established. And, in fact, there was a memorable donnybrook in 1912 during the primary season between challengers Robert La Follette, Teddy Roosevelt and incumbent president William Howard Taft. And there was another memorable race as recently as 1952 between Dwight Eisenhower and Robert A. Taft.

For me, the only notable differences in 1960 were 1.) The use of television, and 2.) The debates between Kennedy and Nixon. But the first would have happened anyway no matter who the candidates were.  It was a matter of the creeping reach and power of the broadcast media.  As for the second, this did not really establish a precedent. Because the next presidential debate did not occur until 1976. So right out of the gate, on page 3 to be exact, it can be said that Wallace is aggrandizing his subject. (As later revealed, this ties into his not so hidden agenda.)

Another disturbing aspect of the book is the fact that Wallace and his researchers, Mitch Weiss and Lori Crim, did not seem to me to do a lot of genuine research.  In looking at the book’s reference notes, almost every one of them is to a prior book, newspaper article or periodical.  There is little that I would call new or original.  And, as I will explain later, some of the sources that Wallace uses are quite dubious; or as we shall see, in some instances, even worse than that.  These factors combine to make the book not just rather superfluous, but questionable at its foundations.

One of the problematic areas of the book is that  very early Nixon is portrayed as an oracle on foreign policy. (p. 14) John Kennedy is portrayed as something of a cliché.  That is, the usual rich, handsome playboy portrait. (p. 17)  For example, Wallace begins by saying that Kennedy started running for the presidency in 1957, a thesis with which I would tend to disagree. (p. 2)  But if you are going to postulate such, how can any honest and objective author ignore Senator Kennedy’s great Algeria speech? Because it was made in that year. 

Why is this both important and revelatory? There are two reasons why. First, that speech really put Kennedy on the national map. As Richard Mahoney noted, it provoked a firestorm of newspaper and periodical comments and editorials from all over the country. (JFK: Ordeal in Africa, pp. 14-16; see also, James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, second edition,  pp. 25-28) That national furor ended up placing Kennedy on the cover of Time magazine, with the inside article titled “Man out Front”.  So how can that not be related to Wallace’s subject?

The reason I think he does not include it is because that speech was a specific attack on President Eisenhower, his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and, most relevant to Wallace’s book, on Vice President Richard Nixon. It assaulted the entire basis of their Cold War foreign policy in the Third World. Kennedy was essentially saying that America should not be backing European colonialism. We should be on the side of nationalism and independence in places like Algeria. And this was not just a matter of American idealism, but one of practicality.  He invoked what had happened three years earlier at Dien Bien Phu, where we had first backed the French empire–and it ended up in disaster. He proclaimed that what we should be doing now is assisting France to the negotiating table, in order to save that nation from civil war.  But we also should be working to free Africa. (See the anthology The Strategy of Peace, edited by Allan Nevins, pp. 65-81) 

If one does not refer to this speech, or the trail that led Kennedy to make it, then yes, one can portray the senator as an empty Savile Row suit and Nixon as the experienced sagacious foreign policy maven. But that is simply not being accurate on the facts of the matter.  As John T. Shaw commented in JFK in the Senate, that speech made Kennedy the new voice of the Democratic party on foreign policy.  Since it challenged the prevailing orthodoxy of Eisenhower and Nixon. As Monice Wiesak wrote, this speech also made Kennedy the defacto ambassador to Africa. Because African dignitaries now began to follow him in the press and visit his office. (America’s Last President, p. 12)

To ignore all of this is to shrink Kennedy and exalt Nixon.  If there is an historical figure who should not be exalted, it is Richard Nixon.  Because it was this Cold War monomania that first, got us into Vietnam, and then, from 1968 onward, kept us there. Until it became even more of a debacle than it had been under the French.

II

But there is another way that Wallace exalts Nixon. This is by minimizing the tactics he used to defeat, first Jerry Voorhees for a congressional seat, and then Helen Gahagan Douglas in a race for the senate. The latter is usually considered one of the dirtiest and most unscrupulous political races in American history. 

Wallace spends all of one paragraph on it. (pp. 10-11)

Which is really kind of startling.  Because illustrious author Greg Mitchell wrote a milestone book on that campaign in 1998.  It was titled Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady.  I could find no reference to that book in Wallace’s references.  In that campaign, Nixon’s team actually accused his opponent of being a conduit for Stalin. (Mitchell, p. 209) As Mitchell notes, up until that time, candidates who made anti-communism their focus usually lost.  That was not the case here. Nixon literally demagogued the issue to an almost pathological extent. As Mitchell notes:

Republican and Democratic leaders alike interpreted the outcome as a victory for McCarthyism and a call for a dramatic surge in military spending…. Red baiting would haunt America for years, the so called national security state would evolve and endure and candidates would run and win on anti-Sovietism for decades. (ibid, xix)

Nixon’s win seemed to demonstrate the political power of McCarthyism, which Senator Joe McCarthy had begun that same year with his famous speech in Wheeling, West Virginia. But as Mitchell proves in his first chapter, McCarthy’s speech drew heavily on the actual words of Congressman Nixon. As with Nixon, it was McCarthy’s aim to make anti-communism a political issue, to portray Democrats as not just soft on communism—Nixon actually tried this with President Truman– but in some cases as commie sympathizers. (This is one reason why Kennedy’s Algeria speech hit home, because it broke through all that Cold War boilerplate with facts and realism.)

As Mitchell reveals—and contrary to what Wallace implies–Nixon had a lot of money in order to smear Douglas. Not only did he get large corporate contributions, but both the LA Times and the Hearst newspapers backed him. Along with Hollywood bigwigs like Cecil B. DeMille, Howard Hughes, Harry Cohn, Darryl Zanuck, Louis Mayer, Anne Baxter, John Wayne and Rosalind Russell. (Daily Beast, article by Sally Denton, November 16, 2009) Nixon also used anti-Semitism, since Douglas’ husband was Jewish. Nixon’s campaign made anonymous phone calls saying, “Did you know that she’s married to a Jew?” (ibid) But in addition to anti-Semitism, the campaign utilized racism. In the last days, thousands of postcards were mailed to white voters in suburbs, and into northern California. That postcard was emblazoned with the phony title—note the gender– “Communist League of Negro Women.”  The message was “Vote for Helen for senator.  We are with her 100%.” (ibid). Can a campaign get any more scurrilous than that? This is why Nixon had such a deservedly wretched reputation as a political hatchet man. Which somehow, and for whatever reason, Wallace wants the reader to forget.

 Nixon lied about what his agenda was both before and after this ugly race. Before it started he said–rather satirically in retrospect–there would be “no name-calling, no smears, no misrepresentations in this campaign.” (Ingrid Scobie, “Douglas v. Nixon”, History Today, November, 1992) And later, he downplayed his tactics for the campaign.  One reason the race had a lasting impact is that Nixon’s manager, the odious Murray Chotiner, became a tutor to the likes of later GOP advisors Karl Rove and Lee Atwater. 

To relegate all this–and much more–to a single paragraph is just inexcusable.  Because, with a trick worthy of a card sharp, it hides two of the most important and unseemly aspects of Nixon’s career, his Machiavellian morality, and obsession with dirty tactics. 

As we have seen, Nixon’s Cold War ideology would lead to a hellish ending in Indochina. His political tactics would cause Watergate. Incredibly, Wallace wants to whitewash both.

III

But all the above is not enough for Wallace, who is herniating himself by cosmeticizing Nixon.  He now makes a rather curious  statement:

In 1960, America moved slowly toward racial equality, partly because of detours placed along the road to civil rights by southern governors. (pp. 23-24)

He then adds something even more curious: Nixon supported civil rights. He uses the crisis at Little Rock’s Central High and the Civil Rights Act of 1957 as his evidence for this.  All of this relies on the ignorance of his audience to maintain even superficial credibility.

Anyone who uses the web can find out that Eisenhower let the students at Central High be terrorized for 20 days while doing nothing. The courts had ordered nine African American students to enter Central High. Governor Orville Faubus called out the National Guard to prevent this. While this was boiling over, Eisenhower actually went on vacation to Newport, Rhode Island. He was then played for the fool by the redneck governor of the state. Faubus came to Newport and told Eisenhower he would now abide by the court ruling and withdraw the National Guard, who had worked against the students. He did not.  And the court ruled against him.  He then removed the Guard. Now the crowd had direct contact with the nine students the court had approved for attendance.

Humiliated by Faubus and with the press now turning on him, Eisenhower had no choice but to call in federal troops.(LA Times, 3/24/1981, article by Robert Shogan.) Then he and Nixon tried to use a face saving device by submitting a weak civil rights bill to congress. They had no interest is expanding civil rights.  What they wanted to do was split the Democratic party in two: the northern liberals from the southern conservatives. Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson did all he could to try and modify the bill so it would not be so polarizing to the southerners. (“The Kennedys and Civil Rights”, Part 1, by James DiEugenio) Because of this, the act ended up being little more than an advisory commission with virtually no real enforcement power.  So what Wallace is trying to sell here about Nixon on civil rights  is transparent bunk.

But again, what he leaves out makes Wallace’s efforts worse than bunk.  The Eisenhower/Nixon team worked against civil rights. As Michael Beschloss has revealed, Eisenhower tried to convince Earl Warren not to vote for the Brown vs Board decision. And, in fact, both Eisenhower and Nixon failed to support that decision. In the 1956 Autherine Lucy case at the University of Alabama, Eisenhower let an African American student be literally run off campus, even though the court had supported her attendance. He did nothing to protect her. (Irving Bernstein Promises Kept, p. 97; Jack Bass, Unlikely Heroes, p. 64)  This was two years after Brown vs. Board.

In a full eight years, the Eisenhower/Nixon administration filed a total of ten civil rights lawsuits.  What makes that even more startling is that six of those years were under the Brown v Board decision. Two of those lawsuits were filed on the last day of Ike’s administration. (Harry Golden, Mr. Kennedy and the Negroes, p. 104) And recall, during the Eisenhower/Nixon years, not only did you have the Brown decision, you had the Montgomery bus boycott. In other words one had some ballast to push ahead on the issue.

Its not enough for Wallace to disguise the real facts about Eisenhower/Nixon on the issue. He now utterly distorts what Kennedy’s public stance was. He says that JFK had been silent about civil rights. (p. 24, p. 160). This is more rubbish from a book that will soon become a trash compactor. In  February of 1956 Kennedy said the following: 

The Democratic party must not weasel on the issue….President Truman was returned to the White House in 1948 despite a firm stand on civil rights that led to a third party in the South…..We might alienate Southern support but the Supreme Court decision is the law of the land.

It is hard to believe that Wallace’s research team missed this speech.  Why? Because Kennedy made it in New York City and the story appeared on the front page of the New York Times for February 8^th.

But in case that was not enough for Wallace, in 1957 Kennedy said the same thing.  This time he made that speech—the Brown decision must be upheld– in the heart of the confederacy:  Jackson, Mississippi. (Golden, p. 95)  As noted in the first speech, JFK made his opinion public knowing full well he would lose support in the south. Which, as Harry Golden noted, is what happened.

One of the most bizarre things that Wallace writes is that Kennedy voted for the watered down version of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. What Wallace somehow missed completely is this: Kennedy did not want to vote for this bill at all.  As he wrote a constituent, it was because it was so weak. He had to be lobbied to vote for it by Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson.  LBJ sent two emissaries to convince him to do so, but Kennedy resisted. Johnson now personally went to Kennedy to lobby him in person.  Kennedy still was reluctant, but he was instructed by some Ivy League lawyers who said it would be better than nothing. (See Lyndon Johnson: The Exercise of Power, by Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, pp. 136-37)

What was the result of all this back and forth?  Essentially nothing.  Because as Harris Wofford wrote in his book Of Kennedys and King, Eisenhower and Nixon resisted just about every recommendation the Civil Rights Commission—which originated with the act—made.  He should know since he was the lawyer for the agency. (p. 21)

So the inactivity on civil rights in the fifties is clearly due to three men: Eisenhower, Nixon and Johnson. When JFK came into office, as Judge Frank Johnson said, it was like lightning.  Things changed that fast. Including going directly at those southern governors Wallace was talking about.

Read part 2